May 27, 2009

Well, busy p day today, we moved the rest of the furniture out of the old house and divided it between our house and two others here in the city. We had the help of one of the members here, Irmão, who as I think about it, reminds me of Brother Gordon, except this brother is big, dark skinned and likes Rapadura (think sugar cane juice made into a bar of sugary goodness), but the same qualities of humble service apply.

Made a cake without flour today and I don’t know if Mitch will ever read this, but things without flour remind me of him.

Pastries, depends, I’ve never seen goiabada in the states, (made from goiaba which I found out is guava)(side note for dad) but they have more or less donuts, fruit breads, coconut is used often in the sweets here as well. Good stuff all around, (That all round part includes me after I finish making a run through the bakery 9 or so at night)

Loved the talk, (General Conference talk on Respect and Reverence) and its def. true, and at times this makes teaching interesting here in this area, very often if there is a bar nearby, there’s a car load of speakers blasting music of far too often vile quality. This being the case we usually mark for another appointment.

Update on investigators, woohooo!! Larissa was baptized and confirmed this past weekend, and her brother and 4 next door neighbors (three kids Bruno, Stephanie and Susie, as well as a man Jair) are looking at getting baptized as well. Her cousin Fernanda wants to be baptized, but her grandma and mom aren’t too fond of the idea (due to false information) and she hasn’t been coming as often to the lessons we teach at Larissa's place anymore. The kid's parents are too busy to go to church on Sunday, but we've contacted their mom and she is more than happy to have them go to church. (I might add that the first Sunday we passed by to pick up Larissa and the kids I think they were ready to go 7 in the morning for us to come by about 8 o clock, always a good time there. Ioná is coming to church and I hope reading as of yet, it’s been awhile since we've passed by since she stopped progressing without an answer concerning the Book of Mormon. But she went to the hot dog activity last weekend, which btw was one of the best activities I’ve been to here in Brazil. (It was pretty good stuff to see a bunch of adults play musical chairs) We had... 6 investigators show up, and all had a good time. The other woman who came to receive some answers the other Sunday didn’t go to church, but she has decided she wants to continue to progress towards baptism, we've also contacted her ex husband who still lives there and he is interested in learning more as well. all in all the work is progressing, I’m working on being bold but not overbearing with people in those situations where people believe their baptisms were performed with the authority of God, or that any form of baptism is ok, or whatever else, but I’m trying to trust more and more in the fact that we don’t make the elect, we are led to them.

BTW hot dogs in Brazil are a little bit different with a kind of amazing sauce they put on there, with corn, potato sticks and I don’t even know what else on them, they're really good though.

Well, that’s about all I have time for this week, I know the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored with all the truth and authority to help us one day return to the presence of our Heavenly Father, and all that remains now is for us to choose His ways. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amém.

Elder Pettit